Month: November 2020

Send To: [email protected] (Miami Herald)

Hi Dave,

I hope this email finds you well.

I have experienced this election year in both New York and Miami, and I’ve become increasingly interested in the Latino vote. I am a Miami native, but New York has been my home for the last ten years. I feel that Miami and New York City are both melting pots of diverse people, Latinos included. New York has a track record of voting blue while Florida usually votes red. I had never really looked into this because I haven’t ever been really interested in politics. However, given the current state of the world it was only appropriate I start to pay attention. I found it strange that although Majority of Miami Dade County voted blue that the state of Florida voted 51% red. I felt that because the largest population of Cubans is in Florida, that they would vote blue seeing as democracy would allow for freedoms that the Cuban government does not offer.

I had been listening to a multitude of radio and television broadcasts that mentioned how the Republican party had appealed to the Latino community more so than the Democratic party. It was said that the democratic party did not try to gain the Latino vote because they simply assumed it was theirs. I started to reach out to friends and family in Miami and asking them about their political affiliations. I was surprised to learn that a lot of the people I know are republican and that their views on democracy are like that of socialism and communism. I was told that the reason why Cubans usually always vote red is because they believe that democracy is a lot like socialism and communism and they fear that if they vote blue, they would eventually help vote in a government similar to Cuba.

I found this to be extremely interesting and wanting to know more. I am working on a pictorial article that I think would be great for the Miami Herald. This article would be showcasing the Republican Latino voice and help other people and politicians alike understand why and what Latinos in Miami want from their government.

I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Best,

Diana Iser

I am not quite done with my conclusion, but here’s my rough draft!:)

The stench of trash is now a trademark of Koreatown in New York City. In 2012, when I first visited Koreatown in the hope that I would get a taste of my hometown, the smell of rotting garbage was the first impression ingrained in my mind. However, after I had more tour experiences in the city, I’ve come to the realization that it’s not the smell of Koreatown but of the entire city.

Moving to the United States from South Korea in 2012, my family had to adjust to life in the United States. Among scores of things that we had to adjust to, recycling habit was one of the hardest and slowest things that changed. In Korea, recycling is mandatory. Recycled items are disposed of in any clear plastic bag, divided by items, and separated into paper, plastic, metal and glass before disposal. Since each apartment building has a set date and time once a week to recycle, residents gather around recycling containers all at the same time and recycle their divided items. If anyone throws wrong items into a wrong container unknowingly, an apartment janitor, who is a watchdog of the whole process, will be their guide.

For food waste disposal, residents of Korea are required to use biodegradable bags, which are priced according to sizes, and throw them into a designated container. Since 2013, the country installed a radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based centralized system of food waste collection in an apartment building’s parking area. In addition, the machine weighs the waste and charges each resident accordingly. In order to reduce the weight, people try their best to remove the moisture from their food waste and oftentimes dry the skin of fruits or vegetables. Since the dried food waste can turn right into animal feeds or compost, it reduces fuel cost used in the process of turning recycling food waste into animal feeds.

According to Intelligent Living, Lee Kang-soo, head of the local government-run food recycling program in Seoul’s Songpa District, said, “Over the last six years, we reduced a total of about 47,000 tons of food waste [with the RFID machines]. We assume it’s because people want to pay less money, since the cost increases with the weight.” Although it was an increase in price that motivated households to recycle, the practice has been benefiting both the residents and our climate.

Korea, which might seem like a recycling pro, was actually not like this back in the 1990s. According to “Korean Household Waste Management and Recycling Behavior, Seunghae Lee, the author, says, “Korea has been through rapid industrial and economic development, causing serious environmental problems including disposal of Municipal Solid Waste,” which means garbage that “comes mainly from homes.” Seeing the garbage growing larger and unmanageable, the government felt the need to do something and implemented “the volume-based waste fee system (unit pricing system)” in 1995. Despite the enforcement of the law, residents in Korea had difficulty adjusting to the new system. In New Yorker, Kim Mi-Hwa, the head of the Korea Zero Waste Movement Network, said, “We went door to door to talk to residents. We would bring people in for a tour of the food-waste facility. We would educate people about how it was healthy. I’ve been shouted at a lot.”

Now putting everything into one bin, Kyung-sun Lee, my mom, said, “It was inconvenient and difficult at first. But people got used to it.” Living in the states for ten years, our family got used to throwing recyclables and others into one plastic bag and got used to things enough to not feel bad and uncomfortable about it. However, in a recent conversation with Kelly Denning, a campaigner at Center for Biological Diversity, I felt like someone coldcoked me in the face and ran. She told me that “items that are not recycled end up in our environment like ocean plastics. It can be buried in a landfill where it generates greenhouse gas emissions. And a lot of times, even the materials that go into our recycling facility is not always fully recycled.”

What was long forgotten in my memory was the sheer fact that trash would end up somewhere in our environment and generate greenhouse gas emissions. Lee, my mom, also agreed with me that she also forgot the importance of recycling properly. “When I first came to the United States, I wondered how this country would be able to sustain this recycling process. The land is plenty, but it can’t be indefinite.”

True to her words, in 2018, China banned the import of recycling materials from the United States. Losing its long-time dumping ground, the United States started throwing its trash into landfills.

Reminders and Upcoming Dates

Rough drafts of story #2 are due today.

There will be NO CLASS next week because of Thanksgiving.

The week of Dec. 3 we will have class as normal; additionally, as an asynchronous option, I will make myself available outside of class hours that week for one-on-one final edit sessions.

Final drafts of story #2 are due on the last day of class, Dec. 10, by class time.

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Presentation

The refugee crisis in Greece, by Noah and Matthew

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Rough Draft Workshop

We’ll break up into breakout groups so you can look at each other’s draft and discuss your stories so far: what looks good, what still needs to be done, what needs to be changed, etc.

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Happy Thanksgiving/Indigenous People’s Day part 2!

Unfortunately my initial idea to write about International students in regards to the results of the elections became much more complicated than I expected, and the piece wasn’t structured enough for me to come up  with something newsworthy. My interviewees were interested about sharing on the cultural aspect of things but as a whole it didn’t flow like I would have liked.

However, I have a pitch idea that I think will gather both timeliness and newsworthiness. As thanksgiving is approaching I realized it would be interesting to do a piece about how international students in the USA celebrate this American holiday, especially during a pandemic. So my idea is to write about how they interpret this tradition and engage with it or not. (are they cooking a turkey? does it mean anything to them? do they celebrate if yes, how? if not, why?) The piece would be a written article, with photographs or could also be a photo essay in its entirety.

If this idea is approved, my sources would be students originally from France, South Korea, India, Ecuador and the Philippines.

I’m pretty happy with my reporting but have concerns about the structure and if everything flows logically. I’m interested if you all think I should include more interviews, because I have a few I could go back over.

I’m also considering turning this into a radio story, so I’d definitely appreciate feedback on whether this piece would work for that or not.

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Foreign Aid in Haiti

photo and subtitle

The United States’ humanitarian relationship with Haiti has spanned decades. According to the U.S. Embassy for Haiti, the United States has invested a total of $6.7 billion in the last 20 years. Additionally, there are innumerable charities in the U.S. concerned with Haiti, spanning many issues like public health and economic growth.

Success has varied. Sometimes clerical problems arise from a lack of transparency. Other mistakes are more devastating. The ongoing cholera endemic in Haiti, for example, has killed at least 9,000 people and was traced to United Nations peacekeepers who were deployed following the 2010 earthquake. Despite once being a powerful force in the Caribbean, Haiti has struggled to build itself back up amid both internal struggles and outside interference.

Jean Pierre-Louis is a Haitian immigrant who currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the founder and executive director of Capracare. The non-profit organization’s mission is to promote access to healthcare in Haiti, using teams and infrastructure established both there and in New York.

Pierre-Louis left Haiti at the age of nine but found himself drawn back to his home country as he got older. Bleak American press coverage of the island and taunts from his classmates growing up, especially in reference to the stereotype that developed in the 90s of Haitians spreading HIV, prompted him to establish his organization. As the COVID-19 pandemic grew early in the year, Capracare was in a unique position to help.

“We are an organization that has a big component on prevention education,” said Pierre-Louis. Their doctors and nurses on the ground in Haiti began pushing the importance of hand-washing and other early strategies for avoiding the coronavirus in early February.

Once the country started shutting down in March, Capracare, instead of closing their doors, responded by putting together kits of PPE and handmade hand sanitizer and distributing them door to door. “Many of the other organizations during that time were not as prepared,” said Pierre-Louis.

His organization’s success speaks to a concern many people have when examining humanitarian aid: the worry that an insider will always do it better than an outsider. Some have criticized American-led aid efforts in Haiti, viewing them as an interference in Haitian affairs or as serving an ulterior motive.

Herold Dasque is a Haitian immigrant and the director of community relations for Haitian Americans United for Progress, a non-profit community resource center operating across several boroughs in New York City. He considers himself opposed to the Republican party but was unwilling to vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. He cited the Clinton family’s involvement in the US’s post-earthquake humanitarian efforts as the reason.

“No one knows whatever happened to 9 million dollars that was raised to rebuild the country,” said Dasque. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that prompted fundraising efforts from nations all around the world, then-President Obama tasked former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton with overseeing US fundraising efforts, and Clinton was named as the United Nations’ special envoy to Haiti. The Clinton Foundation alone claims to have raised $16.4 million of immediate aid after the earthquake. Where all this money went is unclear.

Millions of dollars and two years later in 2012, Clinton stood in front of a new industrial park in Haiti and praised its opening as an example of what the US has done for the island nation. He viewed the project as an economic boon, saying “I know a couple places in America that would commit mayhem to get 20,000 jobs today.” Caracal, Haiti, where the park is located, was completely unaffected by the earthquake.

“A lot of the funds that was raised during the earthquake was raised to help Haiti’s infrastructure, and we felt like the transparency of how that money was spent didn’t do justice for what it was put forward for,” said Pierre-Louis.

This oblique system is what led to another scandal involving the Red Cross, one of the largest humanitarian non-profits in the world. Following the earthquake, they raised almost half a billion dollars. Then, reports emerged in 2015 of widespread failures, including one allegation that the organization had built only six permanent homes since 2010. The Red Cross has since responded, acknowledging that the building of only six homes outside of Port-au-Prince was technically true but claiming that it was due to a change in strategy.

Many people, including Haitians, have accused the Haitian government of corruption and mishandling of funds. However, others believe government officials received very little of the aid that was raised. “I think the Haitian government got a bad rap,” said Pierre-Louis, “but if you didn’t get the funds, how can you spend it?”

Racial disparity of COVID-19

This is what I have so far for my rough draft. Due to conflicting schedules to get more sources, I will soon update them.

JRN 3700 Paper #2 first draft

This is the first draft of my second paper.

There are more sources could be add on that the regulation is being enforced.

The United Kingdom was among the first European countries that closed down to slow the spread of COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic. After a few months, they opened up again business as usual and started to get back to their lives with people going back to work and children going back to classes.

There wasn’t much concern with sending children back to school because there were plenty of studies that cited the risk to students in contracting the virus was minimal. Children under the age of 16 made up just 1% of the COVID-19 cases during the first peak the virus in England, even though 19% of the population was affected cited a study led by Public Health England. 

The country enforced that the students have to attend classes in person, unless they test positive for COVID-19 or have been exposed to someone who has had it.

This is a difference between the UK and the United States. In the US, depending on the state, you do not have to attend classes if you are at risk or chose not to.  This decision came with opposition from UK teaching unions and parents who do not think that the students should go back.

“Teachers want to see schools reopening… but they are very clear that this has to be done safely,” Educational Institute of Scotland’s general secretary Larry Flanagan said in a statement.

Quote on how he felt with schools remaining open. 

Similarly to the US, the UK leaves the decision on how education is to be handled to each region. But, some measures remain the same across the board in teachers encouraging frequent hand washing, students physically distancing from each other, and at the first sign of symptoms in themselves or a family member they need to stop attending school.

Now as COVID-19 cases rise increasingly in Europe, the UK is struggling to keep it contained. To date there are 1,256,725 confirmed cases and 50,365 deaths across the UK. At first the government thought it was safe enough to go back to school, this was not the case, as cases among children and adults have increased. The decision to keep children in school is in question with more and more schools opting to transition to remote learning. 

“Insert quote,” said a teacher from 

How is remote education going 

Issues with poverty across the UK during the first lockdown – how is it being addressed

Are students engaged 

Are kids getting the same quality of education

What issues are students facing learning remote

Are the issues similar to those of the United States students?

This is my first draft for my piece on the political Party in Dominican Republic.

I do want to incorporate one more source for my final draft.

This is what I have gotten so far!

Political Party in DR JRN 3700

Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic took over the world, schools in New York City have been conducted through certain hybrid, as well as fully online formats. This was a measure taken to keep students occupied and educated, while staying home to prevent themselves and others from getting infected by Covid-19. For Mexican-American students and school employees in NYC, the new era raises many issues and uncertainty in their lives, particularly regarding the educational system.

This fall semester has been unlike any other, for students and educators of all school levels. Baruch College, and many other colleges, are conducting classes online for the foreseeable future. At the grade school level, NYC public schools, from grades Pre-K, all the way to the 12th grade, have been trying to get students back into classes for in-person instruction. Some NYC Public Schools have managed to successfully maintain hybrid class models, while others were legally required to close and revert to fully online schooling, due to spikes in recent Covid-19 cases.

For many Mexican students, they have parents who work long hours, and the students are usually at home for most of the day with only their older teenage siblings to watch over them.
“My mother and father work very late”, said Sofia Mendez, a senior in a Brooklyn high school, who has a sister in 7th grade. “Me and my sister both do school online. I’m a senior, so I have anxieties about finishing high school online, graduation being virtual, and what I’m going to do after high school. I’ve been too stressed to apply to colleges.”

The online format has caused many uncertainties and disruptions for New York public school students, including those of Mexican descent. Sofia’s parents can sometimes get home after midnight. Additionally, some younger students may feel lost and many feel like they’re not being properly educated through online Zoom sessions. Sofia added, “my little sister wants me to help her sometimes. But I have my own work to do, and honestly, sometimes her school work is hard, even for me. Our parents can’t help because they don’t speak English too well, and they are usually working very late.”

When asked about her opinion on remote schooling, Sofia’s littler sister said, “I miss seeing my friends every day. But I don’t know if I wanna go back in person. I kinda don’t really like my school. But I love my friends.”

Students are not the only people who are struggling in this unprecedented era. Teachers and school staff also feel much of the same confusion that the students do. One such teacher is Melissa Rojas, who had a unique experience as a New York City educator in 2020. Melissa was a 5th grade teacher in a Brooklyn public school when the school went fully online by mid-March.

“Teaching students through Zoom is stressful, believe it or not. It’s more difficult to track the progress of your students when they are not in class with you.”, said Melissa.

Over the summer, Melissa was hired by a public elementary school in Staten Island, so she changed schools, and was presented with a whole host of new issues for the Fall 2020 semester. This semester, some students at the Staten Island school are back in school because of hybrid models, while some student’s parents opted to keep them in online instruction for the foreseeable future. Melissa is now teaching a 4th grade class that is entirely online via Zoom.

Melissa had this to say about her new school experience: “now that I’m teaching in a different school, some things have changed. I’m going into the school building now. But, my students are still home, so it feels like there’s a certain struggle with trying to reach out to my students. Some students flat-out refuse to do their work, and when I call their homes, usually their siblings answer, because the parents aren’t there. Zoom sessions can really be exhausting, for both the students and the teachers.”

Even though it has been several months since the Coronavirus pandemic caused country wide lockdowns, many people are still frightened by the possibility of being infected with Covid-19. This fear is especially daunting for those who need to go into NYC public schools five days a week. School staff have been frequently getting tested for Covid-19, and there are still high numbers of people being tested positive for Covid-19.
“Since late August, a few staff members have tested positive for Covid-19, and they quarantined for fourteen days, then came back to work in person”, said Melissa.

In addition to being a 4th grade teacher, Melissa also has a daughter who is in the 7th grade. When school went fully remote this past March, Melissa had some concerns:
“My daughter is a Catholic School student. She’s smart, and she’s a social butterfly. I was afraid of how remote learning would affect her at first, but she got used to it quickly. She 
is still close to her friends, and she stays on top of her grades. This fall, soccer practice opened up again, so that’s been keeping her active, which I’m so happy for.”

2020 has proven to be the most unpredictable year in American history. Covid-19 continues to be a constant struggle, as the number of cases are increasing each day. For educators and students in New York City, this era is wearing on them, but they are staying strong to pave the way for a brighter and happier future.

Education in NYC Brings About Many Challenges to Mexican New Yorkers